“There’s a problem with some of her cameras losing power. I’m going to check it out, see if she’s lying.”
Audrey’s eyes narrowed. “There is only one known liar standing on this lawn, and it’s not me.”
She was a hundred-percent correct, but he didn’t have time to deal with her anger right now. The team was on the jet. To Cohen, he said, “It’s going to take several minutes to confirm.”
“We don’t—”
Again, he ignored his partner in running this exercise and faced Audrey. “We need to hurry.”
“I’m lying? Why the hell else would I be here?” she demanded, her voice tight with fury.
“I don’t know. Maybe you just couldn’t stand the idea of me being in town and not seeing me. Bad news for you”—he flashed a fierce grin—“I’m here to work.”
“Oh, screw you. You’re the last person in the world I want to see.” At least the fire in her eyes was better than the devastation of their last meeting in her office. With a final glare, she turned and offered him her bound wrists. “Unlock the damn cuffs.”
He stepped behind her and turned the cuffs to access the keyhole. “If I remember correctly, you like being bound—”
“I swear I will kick you in the balls if you keep talking.”
He deserved it, which was probably why he’d baited her. If they weren’t in a time crunch, he’d let her tear him to shreds. But the training he’d sacrificed her for was about to start, and it was paramount.
Still, he felt a strange joy at seeing her. He got a whiff of shampoo and rain and had a flash of memory. Her hair had been freshly washed—still damp—when he’d kissed her for the first time. Audrey was probably the only person on the planet who could distract him in this way, on today of all days.
He unlocked the cuffs and tucked them away in one of his tactical vest’s pockets. He’d been lucky he carried them. He wasn’t fully tricked out for combat—he was just an observer, after all—and only had the basics he’d need for monitoring the training. He wore the helmet with attached night vision goggles—he’d need the NVGs once darkness fell, which was rapidly approaching—but had skipped the heavy body armor and didn’t have his HK416 assault rifle or breaching charges, or even extra Simunition magazines for his Glock.
He’d grabbed the cuffs just in case one of the locals tried to mess with the training. He’d never once considered he might use them on Audrey Kendrick. She wasn’t the enemy, even if he wanted her to be.
She faced him, rubbing her wrists. “I can’t believe you pulled a gun on me.”
“Not a real gun. It only fires Simunition—as you demanded in your response to the Environmental Assessment you refused to sign.”
She pursed her lips. Oh damn. Those lips. He remembered their feel on his skin. “I’m well aware Simunition is standard practice for these trainings. What I found strange was that you didn’t propose it in the first round.”
“That wasn’t my call. My guess is the brass wanted to hold it back for negotiation purposes.”
“A crappy tactic if they expected me to sign off quickly.”
He shrugged. “I don’t get to tell a captain in the Navy what to do. I could only make recommendations.”
“So now you’re going to claim a captain made you lie about me?”
“No. The blame for that is all on me.” He took a deep breath. “But we don’t have time to discuss that now. You wanted to check the basement?”
She turned and marched back to the stairs inset in the earth. “Why didn’t my key work?”
“It’s not the original door. We had replacements made, special design so the team can simulate blowing locks without damaging your precious historic structure.” He was baiting her again and wanted to bash his head against the nonhistoric door for being an ass. The doors had been changed to match very specific parameters, and there wouldn’t be explosives used at all.
Plus, the lodge was old, and it was cool. He didn’t want to see it harmed any more than she did. After all, he’d spent one of the most entertaining nights of his life here with an incredibly sexy woman who now glared at him with earned loathing in those beautiful hazel eyes. “Listen, you’ve got about ten minutes to show me your cameras are down, and then you need to get the hell out of this area.”
“Jae’s meeting me at the site. I need to wait for him,” she said.
Jae had introduced Xavier to Audrey that fateful night. He’d known Jae-jin Son forever; the Korean-American park ranger was one of his oldest and closest friends. And his old friend knew the training was starting today, which meant Audrey was, in fact, lying. Was she here to stop the training after all?
“No way is Jae coming. I spoke to him this morning. About the training.”
“He told the dispatcher he’d meet me at the gate.”
Relief settled in. So she might not be lying. He didn’t want her to be a liar. “Yeah, probably because he planned to tell you that you couldn’t come up this way. Meeting at the gate and meeting at the site are two different things. He couldn’t exactly tell the dispatcher to announce on the radio to stay away from this area because a top-secret training is starting at sunset.”